The stiff and the fox: an evening of art

2of2Tony Matelli’s sculpture “Josh” at the David Ireland House exhibition.Photo: Leah Garchik / The Chronicle

You climb the stairs of the old Victorian at 500 Capp St., turn left into the double parlor at the front of the building, and what strikes you first is a very lifelike dead person, stretched out as though he’s fallen, elevated a foot or two above the floor. It’s likely you’ll gasp.

“I hope all is well ...” is Tony Matelli’s new show at the David Ireland house, and that work is called “Josh,” after the man — Matelli’s college roommate, I was told — who modeled for it.

The house/museum, as art lovers know, was David Ireland’s meticulously crafted life’s work, an homage to both tradition (in its Victorian backbone) and, to use a modern word, disruption. Things — walls, floors, fixtures, windows — aren’t what you expect. Matelli’s work seemed in sync with Ireland’s vision, kind of eerie, to be truthful, nonetheless hard to look away from. In the artist’s “Untitled (99¢),” the rusty sink, a permanent fixture in a bedroom, serves as the setting for an installation. Water drips into it, sending into motion 99 cents’ worth of coins, miraculously floating on the surface of the water. You stare at the ripples, hear the water plinking and imagine Ireland’s approval of this conceptual art.

P.S. Downstairs in the garage, a small exhibition, “Not the Apple But the Fall,” features works by Francis Alÿs, Fiona Connor and Tony Labat. Alÿs’ “The Nightwatch” is a video filmed by security cameras when, in the wee hours, the artist set a fox loose in London’s National Portrait Gallery. A written description says, “Here the fox enacts the role of guardian, disrupted, foreigner, and local helping to fabricate a visual fable of the modern city.”

It looks like the animal was having a swell time running around but I couldn’t swear it had in mind the fabrication of a visual fable. Furthermore, since the cameras were overhead, it’s impossible to judge from its facial expression whether it preferred Gainsborough to Reynolds.

Artist and self-proclaimed “experimental philosopher” Jonathon Keats has created what he calls “musical instruments for beings across the cosmos.” The products of his Intergalactic Omniphonics — “a wide range of instruments” — will be unveiled at the Modernism Gallery on July 24.

Keats says his “instruments don’t privilege ordinary human hearing.” Further explaining, or maybe not, the artist says his “modes of musical expression ... may be accessible to beings that haven’t evolved ears. Stimuli include light waves and gamma rays from the electromagnetic spectrum, as well as exotic gravitational waves.”

Someone, please ... how do I get back to the fox?

After the San Francisco Opera’s last “Ring” performance, reports

Anthony Barcellos

, General Director

Matthew Shilvock

presented

David Gockley

with the Opera Medal, recognizing the honoree’s 10 years as director. Shilvock thanked Gockley for “invaluable mentorship, characterized by boundless trust that literally changed the course of my life,” and Gockley thanked singers, musicians and techs, and in particular opera supporter

John Gunn.

P.S.: After huge applause at the curtain call, conductor Donald Runnicles, former musical director of the Opera, was overheard telling a fan he’d “love to come back.”

Responding to complaints about the lack of diversity in gender and race in its membership, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences invited almost 800 new members to join last week. That included a large contingent of Bay Area filmmakers and film industry professionals, including:

Leah Garchik washed up on the shores of Fifth and Mission in 1972, began her duties as a part-time temporary steno clerk, and ascended the journalistic ladder. Over the years, she has served as writer, reviewer, editor and columnist. She is the author of two books, “San Francisco: Its Sights and Secrets” and “Real Life Romance."

She is an avid knitter, a terrible accordion player, a sporadic tweeter and a pretty good speller.